Dayhand for Linux: install and desktop setup

What the app does and how it is built and tested is in linux/README.md. This page is about putting it on a desktop, with Omarchy (Hyprland) as the worked example: install, a key for quick add, the tray, notifications, colours that follow the theme, the language, and where the data lives.

Nothing here has been run on a real Omarchy or Hyprland session yet; see Not checked. The Omarchy details follow its own configuration files (omacom/omarchy, branch quattro at 99f479b, read on 2026-10-24).

Install

There is no AUR package. Build the Arch Linux package from a checkout of this repository:

cd packaging/arch
makepkg -si          # builds linux/, runs its tests (needs weston and dbus; --nocheck skips them), installs

It installs /usr/bin/dayhand-qt, io.github.maiarowsky.dayhand.desktop (also the handler of dayhand:// and helm:// links), the icon and the AppStream metadata. It needs qt6-base, qt6-declarative, qt6-svg, qt6-wayland and libsecret; the sign-in is kept by a Secret Service such as gnome-keyring, which Omarchy runs. For Japanese and Chinese, a CJK font such as noto-fonts-cjk must be installed.

First start

Open Dayhand from the launcher. It asks for a server: on a computer signed in with dayhand, run dayhand pair and type the address and code it shows, or open the dayhand://pair?… link it prints (the browser hands it to Dayhand). Not Now, Use Dayhand Offline keeps the tasks on this computer; ⋯ → Connect… connects later and sends them. ⋯ → Disconnect forgets the sign-in here; dayhand revoke <device> ends it on the server.

Closing the window keeps Dayhand in the tray, so reminders keep ringing. Quit Dayhand (tray or ⋯) stops it. Without a tray, closing the window quits.

Task details

Click a task row to open its details on the right (windows at least 800 pixels wide). In a narrower window, the details replace Today and Back returns to the list. Title, status, current work, where you stopped, comma-separated labels and checklist edits save locally and queue for sync. The due field reads English date phrases like quick add, previews them with I understand, and applies them with Return or Set date. Today keeps the time, No day clears day and time, and Remove time keeps the day. Notes save only with Save note; repeat rules, reminders and links are previews, not editors. Archive or trash keeps the selected details open even though the row leaves Today. In the trash, all edits are disabled and Restore brings the task back.

Trash

⋯ → Trash opens a scrolling list of deleted tasks, newest deletion first. Each row has the title, Permanently deleted on 23 Nov (the deletion date plus 30 days, in the settings’ time zone), and Restore. Restoring saves locally and queues the change for sync; the row leaves Trash immediately. Back returns to Today. Only the server purges tasks: an expired row remains here while offline, until a snapshot confirms the purge.

Quick add from any app (Hyprland)

dayhand-qt --quick-add opens the small quick add window. Only one Dayhand runs per session: when it is already running, the second dayhand-qt hands the request over a socket in $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR and exits, so the window appears at once. Return adds the task and closes the window, Escape closes it.

On Omarchy, personal bindings go in ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua (Super + Alt + N and Super + Alt + D are free in Omarchy’s defaults; omarchy menu keybindings --print lists what is taken):

o.bind("SUPER + ALT + N", "Dayhand quick add", { launch = "dayhand-qt --quick-add" })
o.bind("SUPER + ALT + D", "Dayhand", { launch = "dayhand-qt" })

{ launch = … } runs the command through uwsm-app, as Omarchy does for its own apps. To have the quick add window float in the middle of the screen instead of tiling, add a window rule at the end of ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.lua (the window’s class is the app id, its title is always the English Dayhand quick add):

o.window({ class = "io\\.github\\.maiarowsky\\.dayhand", title = "^Dayhand quick add$" }, { float = true, center = true })

To start Dayhand in the tray when you log in, add to ~/.config/hypr/autostart.lua:

o.launch_on_start("dayhand-qt --background")

On Hyprland without Omarchy, the same in hyprland.conf (the window rule syntax changes between Hyprland versions; check it against the wiki for yours):

bind = SUPER ALT, N, exec, dayhand-qt --quick-add
exec-once = dayhand-qt --background
windowrulev2 = float, class:^(io\.github\.maiarowsky\.dayhand)$, title:^(Dayhand quick add)$
windowrulev2 = center, class:^(io\.github\.maiarowsky\.dayhand)$, title:^(Dayhand quick add)$

The GlobalShortcuts portal (not used)

Hyprland’s portal (xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland) also offers the GlobalShortcuts interface: an app registers a named shortcut (here it would be quick-add) and Hyprland binds a key to it with the global dispatcher (bind = SUPER ALT, N, global, io.github.maiarowsky.dayhand:quick-add, hl.dsp.global(…) in Lua). Dayhand does not register one in this version. The binding above does the same with nothing to set up in the app and works on any compositor that can run a command; the portal path would need a portal session kept for the life of the app and cannot be tested without a running Hyprland. It is a candidate for later, for desktops where users cannot add bindings of their own.

Tray

Dayhand’s tray icon is a StatusNotifierItem with a dbusmenu menu, which Qt provides over D-Bus. Omarchy’s shell shows such items in its tray, and so do Waybar’s tray module and KDE. The tooltip says how many tasks are open today and how many are overdue, and the icon gets a red mark when something is overdue. The menu has Quick Add…, Open Dayhand, up to ten of today’s open tasks (choosing one ticks it off), Sync Now and Quit Dayhand. A click on the icon opens the window; a middle click opens quick add.

Notifications

Reminders and the morning summary go to the notification service on the session bus (org.freedesktop.Notifications: Omarchy’s shell, mako, dunst, GNOME, KDE). A reminder has Done, which completes the task, and opening it shows Dayhand; it has normal urgency. The morning summary has low urgency, so it waits quietly. Dayhand rings only while it runs (in the tray); a reminder more than 15 minutes late, after the laptop slept, is dropped, as on Android.

In ⋯ → Settings…, Morning summary chooses the hour and minute (initially 05:00). Default reminders has checkboxes for At the time, 5, 10, 15, 30 min, 1 h, 2 h, and 1 day before the due time. Uncheck every box for no default reminders; a task with its own reminders keeps those instead. The displayed time zone comes from the server settings (this computer’s zone before the first sync). Changes save at once in the local database, replan reminders immediately and send app:updateSettings through the outbox. A server snapshot cannot undo fields with settings changes still waiting to be sent.

Colours and Omarchy themes

Dayhand takes its colours from the system palette, which Qt gets from the platform theme. Omarchy sets QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk3, so Qt apps follow the GTK theme’s light or dark mode, not the colours of the Omarchy theme itself.

For the theme’s own colours, Dayhand reads a palette file, the first of:

1. $DAYHAND_PALETTE
2. ~/.config/dayhand/palette.conf
3. ~/.local/state/omarchy/current/theme/dayhand-palette.conf

with key = value lines (# and ; start comments). The keys are the names of Omarchy’s colors.toml: background, lighter_background, foreground, accent, selection_foreground, muted, and red or overdue for overdue tasks. A key left out keeps the system’s colour. Dayhand watches the file and recolours the running window when it changes.

Omarchy renders every template in ~/.config/omarchy/themed/ into the current theme’s folder on each theme switch, so one template keeps Dayhand in step with every theme:

# ~/.config/omarchy/themed/dayhand-palette.conf.tpl
background = {{ background }}
lighter_background = {{ lighter_background }}
foreground = {{ foreground }}
accent = {{ accent }}
selection_foreground = {{ selection_foreground }}
muted = {{ muted }}
red = {{ red }}

Run omarchy theme set <theme> (or pick a theme in the menu) once after adding it. A theme without an accent colour leaves that line empty and Dayhand keeps the system’s highlight.

Language

Dayhand speaks English, Polish, German, Spanish, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and Simplified Chinese. It follows the system’s language (LANGUAGE, LC_MESSAGES, LANG) and falls back to English; ⋯ → Settings… → Language picks another one at once. Quick add reads date phrases in English in every language (“tomorrow 9am”, “fri”, “23 oct”), the same grammar as dayhand.

Data and settings

Environment variables: DAYHAND_DATA_DIR=<folder> keeps the database and preferences there instead (for a second profile or a test), DAYHAND_CREDENTIALS=memory keeps the sign-in in memory only, and DAYHAND_PALETTE=<file> names a palette file.

Not checked

• No run on Omarchy, Hyprland or another real desktop. The trash and reminder settings were built and tested locally with Qt 6.12, isolated HOME/XDG profiles and in-memory credentials: Qt’s offscreen window tests, headless Weston with fake tray/notification services, and the real dayhand-qt smoke test. A synthetic UI walkthrough also exercised Trash, Restore and the settings controls on Weston. The container run was not checked for this change; Docker access was not requested. The bindings, window rule, autostart line and theme template follow Omarchy’s files, not a test on the system.
• Not tried with the Omarchy shell’s tray or notification centre, Waybar, mako or dunst; only the D-Bus interfaces they implement were exercised.
• The Secret Service keyring path was not exercised (the tests keep the sign-in in memory), and no pairing with a real server was made from this app; pairing and sync were tested against a fake server.
• The settings screens were captured locally in all eight languages, including Japanese and Chinese with CJK fonts. The translations have not been reviewed by native speakers, and this does not verify every layout in every language.